Over the last few years, I've been collecting old wax & foil packs of trading cards from the 80s & 90s. When you would buy one of these packs you would tear it open and throw away the wrapper. Never giving it a second thought. Seeing these again brings back memories of feeling the slick paper in your hands, seeing the simple artwork and the smell of bubble gum. In celebration of the return of Major League Baseball after the great lockout of 2022, let's dive into a few of these packs that I have on display and celebrate a few of my favorite players from my #1 team...the NEW YORK METS!
1988 Donruss
1990 Topps Traded
1991 Donruss
1991 Fleer
1992 Topps Stadium Club
Thanks for taking a minute to look at some old packs of baseball cards and humoring my die hard Mets fandom. I hope whoever you cheer for has a great season and you can enjoy the game to the fullest! If you feel like checking out the classic 1985 broadcast of the Mets vs. Cubs game, feel free to watch the Youtube video below. Now let's PLAY BALL!!!
This set of 10 Monster Baseball Trading Cards were released by Mirage Studios in 1990. Yes, the same Mirage Studios that brought us the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles! The cards were drawn by renowned artsist Gahan Wilson and the entire set is contained in this one awesome wrapper/box. If you don't know who Gahan Wilson is, you may know some of his work from the pages of Playboy, Collier's or the New York Times where he created cartoons for over 50 years. In 1993 he helped create the computer game "The Ultimate Haunted House" and he was awarded with a lifetime achievement award at the World Fantasy Awards in 2005. Wilson passed away in November of 2019 due to complications of dementia. I'm not quite sure how he and the folks at Mirage got together to create this set of cards, but I think they are pretty cool looking! The fronts feature Wilson's signature artwork and the backs contain stats and bios for each of the fictitious ballplayers. I was able to get my hands on a set as Kevin Eastman was giving away one set to each person that made an order on his site in the month of September! I took advantage of this deal and you can see what was in the set below!
Overall it's a pretty cool set. My favorite has to be the Chris Lee card, an obvious nod to actor Christopher Lee who starred in many classic horror movies like "Horror of Dracula". I also really enjoyed the aliens in the set. How can you not love a guy named "Urp Barf"? I'm glad I was able to add this bit of odd Mirage Studios merchandise to my collection...just in time for Halloween!
I had a friend tip me off to a little Antique Mall just a few miles out of town. I went there this week to see what kinda of amazing retro treasures I could find. Unfortunately the place was filled with mostly old junk. Between the used romance novels, broken tools, lamp shades and 1987 Topps Baseball Cards I found these sweet items! Let's walk down the aisles and take a look.
7up Cool Spot Telephone: $10.00
In the early 90s Cool Spot the 7up mascot was everywhere. He even had his own Nintendo game! I love seeing this little guy when I go to these antique stores. Sure it makes me feel old, but it brings back some nice memories. I don't collect phones and I don't even have a land line that I could connect this to if I did, so I passed on bringing Mr. Spot home.
Incredible Hulk Peter Pan Album Cover: $1.50
I saw this album cover in a corner next to a power strip and freaked out a little. We used to have albums like this when I was a kid. We had everything from super heroes to Strawberry Shortcake to those Disney records with the pictures printed on them. I was a little disappointed to find that this was just an empty sleeve, but at least I saved myself a few bucks?
VTech Electronic Talking Baseball Game: $3.98
Anything with the words "Electronic" and "Talking" definitely gets my interest. I never had this toy as a kid, but wouldn't mind having it in my collection. I have quite a few old handheld electronic games at home. If it's there next time I go, maybe I will pick it up for the reasonable price of $3.98. Only problem is I couldn't tell if it worked or not. The "As is" tag kind of scares me off from buying toys like this.
Superman The Movie Beverage Mug: $9.95
I wanted this mug! The $10 price tag made me put it back on the shelf though. This would have been on my shelf at half that price. I love the old Christopher Reeves movies and this piece was in nice condition, but once again I really don't collect mugs. I'll pass and save my money for some more Superman trading cards or the elusive (to me) jar of Superman Peanut Butter! That baby has been on my wish list for a long time!
NAKI Super Nintendo Cleaning Kit: $?
This was a complete NAKI Super NES cleaning kit from the mid 90s. Everyone had something like this. Me and my brother actually had the official Nintendo cleaning kit for our SNES that was shaped like a SNES cart and actually did a pretty good job of cleaning our system whenever it would get a bad case of the blinks. I considered buying this, but it was in a locked case with no price tag in sight.
Masters of The Universe Golden Puzzle (Sealed): $9.95
This puzzle was the one item that I really fought putting back on the shelf. A SEALED MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE GOLDEN PUZZLE from 1984! I love the artwork and I am a huge MOTU fan, but I'm sure I couldn't justify this purchase to the wife. Maybe next payday?
I saw a few other things that I liked there like some McDonalds International Beanie Babies, some Domino's Pizza Hats and a Baby Mickey Mouse toy. All in all there was nothing incredible there, but I will be making a return trip sometime in the future. Ugh! Why did I not buy that He-Man puzzle?
This has to be the worst Baseball card photo of all time! I mean seriously, what is going on here? This is Andre "Awesome" Dawson! One of the best sluggers of the 80s, a hall of famer and an all-time great. Why did Classic choose this picture out of all the shots I'm sure they had? Why are Dawson's legs so oddly posed? Is he really taking a fastball to the head? What happened after this shot, did a fight break out? So Many Questions!
My theory is that Dawson approached the plate and in a moment of both cockiness and craziness he decided to perform the Funky Chicken dance to insult the pitcher. Earlier in the game the pitcher, let's say it was Bret Saberhagen, threw a curve ball that Dawson took over the fences. In retaliation Saberhagen throws at Dawson's head as his body flails from his epic dance moves. The pitch connects and Dawson goes down! A huge fight ensues and the game is called due to every player on the field being knocked out by each other's wild haymakers. That is what I choose to believe happened on that infamous day in Chicago.
Sorry to waste your time with this post. I got this card out of a pack and so many questions blew through my mind! Let's all celebrate Andre Dawson and his wackiness in this video from his outstanding MLB career as a Cub!
Back in the late 80s & early 90s Topps released a series of metal coins that had pictures of some of the biggest stars of the time. Me and my brother collected them, not as much as regular Topps Baseball Cards, but nonetheless we had a nice collection. Recently I found a value box of old baseball cards at target for around $5.99. The main reason I bought this box was because it contained about 30 of these Topps coins.
When I saw these in the box, I immediately had to buy it for nostalgia's sake. I'm pretty sure you can find these sets online for a fairly cheap price. A quick search and I was able to find the 1990 set for $7.99.
Just like most card sets, Topps Coins had their premium coins. These were your MVPs, Rookies of the Year and record breakers from the most recent baseball season. It was always at treat to see a blue or pink coin come out of your Topps pack. As kids, we treated these things like real GOLD!
In the bundle I had bought, I was able to get some of my 1990s Baseball favorite players like Gary Sheffield, Cal Ripken, Howard Johnson, Rickey Henderson and Ken Griffey Jr.! The backs of these coins did not have your traditional season stats on them, but rather some season highlights for each player. For example the back of the Ryne Sandberg coin states "In 1989 Ryne set 2nd base record with 90 straight errorless games. He led Cubs with 176 hits and 30 HR." Who knew right!
Okay, so the real reason I spent $5.99 on a box of old cards and coins was to get this BO JACKSON coin from the 1990 set. I am a huge Bo Jackson fan and I never owned this coin as a kid, it was not even a question if I would leave this Bo collectable on the shelf at Target.
The closest thing we have to these coins today is the Topps Chipz line of collectables. These retail for around $2-$3 a pack, are pretty heavy duty and resemble poker chips in size and weight. The cool thing is that with every pack of Topps Chipz, you have the chance to pull an autograph, glow-in-the-dark, magnetic or relic chip! That's enough to keep me grabbing packs!
Last week baseball and softball started for my kids and I am happy to say that 2 of them are on the Little Caesars team! They were so excited and asked if we could have Little Caesars for dinner after every game! I was okay with that, but unfortunately we were all vetoed by my sensible wife! This could have been my family...
Of course like every year we are required to bring the traditional after game snacks for at least one game per kid. My oldest wanted the healthy choice of Twinkies, but when we went to Wal-Mart to pick them up we found these instead...
Hostess Baseball Cupcakes! I hadn't had these since the early 90s and didn't even think they were still around. Not only did they have the usual "Yellow Cake" variety, but they now have "Chocolate Cake"! I think it's kind of cool how Hostess labels the yellow cake as "Day Game" and the chocolate as "Night Game." Simple but fun! My only complaint is that they don't come with cards anymore!
Back in 1993 me and my brother used to eat these things by the dozen just to get the free baseball cards in each package. Once we had enough for 2 complete sets, we stopped eating them and I hadn't had one since!
The baseball fever doesn't stop on the snack front, it also invaded our breakfast table in the form of Home Run Crunch!
This is pretty much just Cap N' Crunch with Crunch berries in the shapes of bats and balls. Nevertheless it was still delicious and the box was empty in 2 days.
After eating all these delicious treats I need to work off the pounds! I guess it's time to make like Ham Porter and...
Whenever I go to the Dollar Tree I always buy a pack of their sports cards. More often than not it is the Ultimate Super Jumbo Pack. You get 30 mixed sport trading cards for only $1. Most of the time you get some decent cards that range from the 80s to today. I usually tear open the pack and throw away the wrapper. Except this time I turned the pack over and discovered an offer for a FREE Autographed Trading Card. In exchange for 4 wrappers and $3.99 shipping and handling I could receive an authentic autographed trading card! I was in!
I waited my 4 to 6 weeks and finally received this foil package in the mail! Who would it be? What sport would the player be from? So many questions! So much ANTICIPATION! I opened up the pack carefully and got....
Rolando Gomez. I had no idea who he was, so as anyone would do I Googled him. Through this advanced mystery solving technique I found out that Rolando Gomez was not a very good player. According to his MiLB page, Rolando was drafted in the 11th round in 2008 and was out of baseball by 2014. In this time he played for 6 teams and never made it to the bigs. Well the redemption offer gamble was worth a shot, probably won't do it again. Thanks for the thrills Cardsone! You can watch his prospect video below.
